The sender of an electronic message typically does not know whether or not the recipient has accessed the received message until the recipient takes some action--e.g., sends an acknowledgement message back to the sender--that is indicative of message receipt. If the message is urgent, the sender would like to know whether the message was accessed in time or whether follow-up using a different communications means is required. Some existing messaging systems have the capability of automatically sending an acknowledgment message from the recipient to the sender when the sender's message is received and/or when the sender's message is accessed by the recipient. While it may be inferred from a lack of the corresponding acknowledgement that the message has not been received or accessed, the lack of an acknowledgement does not provide the sender a positive indication of the message status. Moreover, it still leaves open the question of how and where the recipient can be contacted if the acknowledgement message is not received in time.